


Scarlet Macaw

by Hyarrowen



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Live Kennedy Universe, Character Death Fix, Multi, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 03:10:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10676472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyarrowen/pseuds/Hyarrowen
Summary: In Kingston after the trial, events take an unexpected turn - and then an even more unexpected turn.





	Scarlet Macaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BauhiniaKapok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BauhiniaKapok/gifts).



> With thanks to heloise1415 for the naval beta; and to BauhiniaKapok for the canon beta, and for giving me the bunny, along with some very nice mental images!

The bird landed in a blaze of colour on the taffrail. Like a living rainbow, it flapped its mad colours as it sized up its chances of a portion of ship's biscuit, held out by a hopeful powder-monkey.

Bush watched in amusement. The native traders had swarmed around the ship like chicks round a mother hen, and all manner of livestock had clambered or been hauled aboard. There was Oldroyd, an old shipmate of Hornblower's now back under his command, swaying aboard a bunch of bananas nearly big as himself. There was Styles - 

Bush opened his mouth to roar, “Styles! Put that woman down!” But for once, they needed as many of the locals on board as possible. They were here in the Lesser Antilles to gather information, after all, so he shut his mouth again. Styles winked at him, knowing very well what had just gone through his mind, and went down the companionway, with the girl's arms twining round his neck. Bush muttered to himself. Such goings-on were all very well on land, but on board ship they could only lead to poor discipline.

The macaw screeched. It had the biscuit in one claw and its powerful beak was making short work even of the hard tack. The powder-monkey watched it with round eyes.

Bush became aware of another pair of eyes, and looked up to meet the dark gaze of his captain: Horatio Hornblower, the youngest commander in the West Indies, and one of the ablest. And for the brief moment that their eyes locked, all the blue bay, fringed with palms, all the busy boats on its waters and the noise and colour of the forenoon watch simply vanished.

There had been another such bird, a couple of months back. 

-x-

In the Naval Hospital at Kingston Bush had clambered painfully into his clothes, ready to follow young Kennedy into the court-room, simply to be there even if he could not help him, and Dr Clive had told him in no uncertain terms that he was being an idiot. “I can't stop you going. But I'm not going to help you.”

Bush told him to go to hell, and collapsed before he reached the door, and that was that. When he came to, Kennedy was gone.

By the time the trial was over, he had recovered enough for visitors, and Hornblower had come, and they raged at their lordships and injustice and all the prerogatives of the powers that be, and lapsed into furious silence; and then Hornblower had been summoned by Pellew, and Bush, eventually, went down to the dockyard for light duties.

He was there a fortnight, overseeing repairs and re-victualling and trying to find men to replace the ones that had been lost; and at the end of that time he was fevered, back in hospital, this time in a private room, and under the surveillance not of Dr Clive, damn him, but a small, evil-tempered physician who was nevertheless infinitely more skilled in the profession than that worthy. It was with some surprise, however, that Bush, on opening his eyes one morning, found himself looking at a man he had thought was dead.

“What in the name of God...” he whispered, and Archie Kennedy looked up from his newspaper and smiled. 

“Mr Bush. Are you feeling quite recovered?” 

“I was. Not any more,” said Bush. “Are you real?”

Kennedy, smiling, held out his hand for answer, and Bush took it and gripped it hard. Warm, calloused, alive. Bush covered his eyes.

“Oh, damn it,” said Kennedy. “I knew I should have let Horatio tell you. He's only just left – we've been keeping a close eye on you while the fever had a hold...”

“I'm not fevered now?” Bush loosed his hand and looked at him again. Kennedy's tan was fading, and he was thin – but most definitely alive.

“No, not any more. Here, have a drink. Dr Maturin said you should as soon as you woke. They make it out of pineapple rind. Go on, try it.”

Kennedy held Bush's head and lifted a glass to his lips with a hand that shook just slightly. There was ginger and sugar in the drink too, and it was very refreshing. Bush gulped the sweet liquid down, and eyed his helper.

“You're going to tell me what happened, I take it, Mr Kennedy.”

Kennedy laughed. “Not I. Sir Edward will do that, in his own good time. You'd better go back to sleep now, and I'll tell Dr Maturin you've been awake.”

And that was the end of that for a while.

By the time Bush was reliably on his feet again, Pellew had emerged from whatever swirl of activity he had been engaged in, and summoned him to his presence with a curt note. Bush, hat under his arm, waited in a dim corridor outside an office in an annexe of the Admiralty buildings, of whose existence he had been previously unaware. He was utterly unsurprised to be joined by Hornblower, looking as intense and determined as ever. Bush stared at him for a long moment, and then said, “I heard you've been visiting me, sir.”

“Yes.” Hornblower was uncommunicative.

“Thank-you for that. And someone else visited me too.” He gave Hornblower another accusing stare, who returned it blandly, and then the door of the anteroom opened and the secretary called them through to Pellew's office.

Archie Kennedy was already seated there, and Dr Maturin, to Bush's surprise. 

“Dr Maturin is here on Admiralty business, the details of which you do not need to know,” stated Pellew. Bush put on his most wooden face, and bowed, and sat when he was told. Kennedy and Hornblower, he knew full well, were smiling at each other behind their own wooden masks; and Pellew harrumphed and said, “Well, Mr Bush. I trust you are quite recovered now?”

“Thank-you, sir, yes.”

“And Mr Kennedy , though not quite as good as new, is well able to function in Dr Maturin's department, since he is dead.”

“Dead, sir?” Bush could not keep back the question.

“Yes, Mr Bush. The records state that he is dead, and who are we to question the records? They may become mislaid, misfiled, lost in floods or hurricanes, mistakes may be made: but for the present, he is dead. Which means that he has a certain freedom of movement which is not shared by many officers of the ships and garrison of the port. He is no longer well enough to go to sea in any fighting capacity - but he is still able to serve his King and his country. He will be working with Dr Maturin, to whom the two of you will also report, as commander and first lieutenant of _Retribution_.”

Bush glanced at Maturin's sharp face, and the word _spy_ flitted into his brain.

“Yes, gentlemen. You have a rather different mission from your usual one. Not to seek out and destroy our enemies, but to become our eyes and ears in the West Indies. See to it that you do your work well!”

And he waved them off into the anteroom, from where they were ushered into a small office by Dr Maturin, and there they were given orders for a cruise to the Antilles just off the coast of South America, where trouble was fomenting that Dr Maturin had long foreseen.

Once Maturin had left them, Bush sat back and looked at the other two. “I'm out of my depth here. I'm a plain sailor-man, that's all. You, Kennedy, you're invisible now; and you, sir, you'll get wherever you're going sooner rather than later.” Hornblower smiled self-deprecatingly in response to the compliment, but it was true. “But me? What can I do on this mission?”

“You're a better seaman than either of us,” said Hornblower. 

“And unlike Horatio, you don't get seasick in anything more than a mild breeze,” said Kennedy lightly, and Hornblower cuffed him, equally lightly, over the head.

They ate in a dining-room in the annexe, of which they were, this evening, the only occupants. Warmed by better wine than he had ever drunk, Bush was thinking of his bed by the time the clock struck ten. “I'd best get back to the dockyard,” he said. “I must hand over properly. If Styles has been in there while I've been gone -”

“Matthews will have him well in hand,” said Hornblower. “They're being transferred to the _Retribution_ , too. I said I couldn't do the job without all of you. You can sleep in the town, Mr Bush.”

“It's all been arranged, hasn't it?” said Bush, staring from one to the other. “Which still leaves me with a bed to find for tonight.”

“There are bedrooms upstairs,” said Hornblower. Silence fell between them suddenly.

As in a dream, Bush got up and followed the two of them up a back-staircase, winding its way up through the innards of the annexe; as in a dream, he stood while Kennedy unlocked a door, opened it, and moved aside to let them through. 

The door closed behind them. It was very quiet within the building, though loud with cicadas outside, and beyond all, the distant voices of the town and the hush of waves on the shore. Hornblower lit a lamp with the taper he was carrying. The room was white-painted; the shutters threw barred shadows on the floor.

“This is my room. There's space for three, if you don't mind sharing,” said Kennedy quietly. “If you do mind sharing, we can find you another room easily enough.”

The room was sparsely furnished, also in white; his two friends stood close by him, watching him in the breathing quiet. He glanced at the bed. It was wide enough, for sure, and looked more comfortable than anything he'd ever slept on in his life before.

One man at his left hand, dark-haired, eyes intent as always. The man of whose presence Bush had been so aware, all through _Renown's_ ill-fated voyage; so very aware of the water on his bare skin and the slaking of his thirst.

One man at his right; fair hair, blue eyes, always living on his nerves – Bush knew the signs well enough – and still one of the bravest men he'd ever met. 

He felt the same way as he had when the three of them had run for the cliff-edge and leapt. 

“I'll stay,” he said thickly.

Two exhalations of relief; the glint of smiles half-hidden by shadows, and they were busy about him, slipping his uniform off, quick and competent as any gentlemen's valets; their own uniforms were laid by his; and naked they slid between cool linen sheets and embraced.

-x-

“It didn't seem quite right without you, once we knew you,” said Hornblower – Horatio – as the clocks in the town struck midnight. His head was on the pillow, next to William's, one of whose arms was wound protectively around Archie, supporting some of the weight of his injured body. They were all three sated, drowsy, and in confiding mood. “Not that we'd had much chance, not at sea. But we managed it a few times. And then, there you were. And there was - just a gap, where you should have been.”

“A gap? What do you mean, a gap?”

“Someone brave as a lion, competent beyond belief and strong as Hercules.”

“But you couldn't get Styles, so you had to settle for me,” said William. The other two, taken unawares by that vision, dissolved into horrified laughter, and from that into unseaman-like cuddling, all three together, Horatio seeming to think that he should now take particular care of his two damaged bedmates - and from that into sleep.

-x-

William woke when dawn was showing through the shutters. The white room, in the pale light, looked like a snow-scene. But it was not cold; though on one side of William there was a cool space where the night before there had been Horatio's warm, lanky body.

William got his eyes fully open, and there on his other side was Archie, also waking up.

“This is real too,” murmured Archie, answering his thoughts. He nodded at the far corner of the room. Horatio was peering out through the crack in the shutters there, and seeing them awake, swung them wide open. There was a pale-blue sky behind his naked body, and the first pearly-gold sunlight, and a balustrade, like the one around the roof of the Admiralty building. They were perched high above the town; there was just a palm-top or two to be seen otherwise.

“Is the _Retribution_ still in harbour? Or has she sailed away in the night?” asked Archie.

Horatio smiled ruefully. “She's still there.” A scarlet parrot flapped across the pale-blue sky, landed on the balustrade, and screeched cheerfully. Horatio turned to look at it, his face lightening, and William and Archie looked at smiling Horatio.

“Don't take any notice of Horatio,” said Archie, shifting position slightly to be nearer William. His hand slid around William's waist. “He gets the fidgets, that's all.”

“I won't worry about him at all,” said William, and gave Archie his full attention; and in another minute Horatio had joined them, leaving the macaw to enjoy the morning sunlight all on its own.

-x-

The bird on the taffrail screeched again, recalling Bush to the here and now, and took to the air. Up on the quarterdeck, Hornblower was turning away to speak to the sailing-master. But that brief moment when their eyes had met was all Bush needed to heat him through and through; and when all was said and done it was only a week before they would be back in Kingston with their report, and climbing the stairs to the white attic room in the annexe once again.


End file.
